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IBM MQ vs TIBCO Enterprise Message Service comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM MQ
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
1st
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Message Queue (MQ) Software (1st)
TIBCO Enterprise Message Se...
Ranking in Business Activity Monitoring
2nd
Ranking in Message Oriented Middleware (MOM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Business Activity Monitoring category, the mindshare of IBM MQ is 29.8%, down from 40.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service is 15.1%, down from 24.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Activity Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM MQ29.8%
TIBCO Enterprise Message Service15.1%
Other55.1%
Business Activity Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Md Al-Amin - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable and secure performance consistently enhances message transfer
IBM MQ is more reliable and secure than other software. There is a saying that for the last 30 years IBM MQ has never been hacked. It is more secure and reliable. Whenever the configuration is done, I do not have to touch it again. It works fine, it is stable, and its communication is to the point and accurate. All performance-related aspects are better. Performance-wise, it is scalable, and other features such as DR, DC, replication, and active passive mode are complex to configure, but it remains scalable. The pricing model for IBM MQ could be more flexible for clients.
Ray Ochieng - PeerSpot reviewer
A value-for-money solution with the requisite features to facilitate efficient communication within an organization
We have been struggling with the stability of TIBCO Enterprise Message Service (EMS), but now I don't know how to differentiate whether the issues are caused by the infrastructure or the product itself. So, I am hesitant to provide a rating because I suspect that it might be due to my setup or environment. I really don't know how to evaluate the product independently. We have faced challenges with EMS, but I am unsure if it is related to infrastructure or the product itself. Even if I reach out for support, I am uncertain if the issue will be resolved since it could be partly related to the product. It's a tough situation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The biggest advantage of IBM MQ is its reliability."
"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."
"We have found the MQ messaging topologies valuable."
"IBM MQ's flexibility has sped up our active communication."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The solution is very stable."
"I appreciate the level of control we have over queue managers, queues, and the messaging itself. That provides good security. So, the control and scalability of messaging are important to me."
"Combined with IBM MQ, this product is our primary data store."
"The Enterprise Messaging Server will store the message and wait for other subscribers to come onto the network."
"It allows us to achieve synchronous as well as asynchronous communication with the added advantage of making the communication reliable."
"I like TIBCO's ability to create versioned queues and persistent messages."
"We have implanted the core middleware solution for the organization using this product and it is responsible for communication between different applications."
"The setup was done by TIBCO. It has been stable and has a server."
"It is very useful tool. It is also very easy to learn and implement.​"
"​The initial setup is straightforward and the product documentation is very good.​"
"TIBCO Enterprise Message Service's most valuable features are rapid zero-code integration and its large number of adapters and plugins."
 

Cons

"There are many complications with IBM MQ servers."
"While there is support for API, it's not like the modern API capabilities."
"Scalability is lacking compared to the cloud native products coming into the market."
"If they could have some front-end monitoring tool that could be easily available for the team to use, that could be great."
"I would like to see it integrate with the newer ways of messaging, such as Kafka. They might say that you have IBM Integration Bus to do that stuff, but it would be great if MQ could, out-of-the-box, listen to public Kafka."
"Presenting and maybe having some different options for different user experiences based on the administrative duties that you have to do as an app manager or configure the server or security would be an improvement."
"We would like to see the IBM technical support team extend their hand to providing support for other cloud vendors like Azure, Google Cloud, and AWS"
"It needs a User Interface which is better than the aging MQ Explorer. The existing solution MQ Explorer is outdated."
"I would like to see better integration with Java and Apache Kafka."
"Overall, my experience with the support team has been disappointing."
"​Since all the communications goes through this product, it acts as a single point of failure."
"TIBCO also has its proprietary line of cloud-based applications, but specifically, these two products are not cloud compatible."
"An area for improvement would be integration with the API layer."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the pricing is reasonable, especially with IIB as a part of it."
"IBM products, in general, have high licensing costs and support costs are too high."
"IBM MQ has a flexible license model based on the Processor Value Unit (PVU) and I recommend it."
"It's a very expensive product."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price a seven. The product is expensive."
"I think IBM needs to look at its pricing. The prices of IBM products should be simple. The old way of pricing should now be moving on to the cloud to be pay as you go, a plan-based kind of pricing."
"IBM is expensive."
"In terms of cost, IBM MQ is slightly on the higher side."
"​The cost of licensing is very high. One should go for the product only if they need to ensure message reliability and they cannot afford to lose messages.​"
"In our case, we didn't pay for each product separately. We simply paid for all those companies that provided the components."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
35%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
43%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
5%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise145
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is MQ software?
Hi As someone with 45+ years of experience in the Transaction and Message Processing world, I have seen many "MQ" solutions that have come into the market place. From my perspective, while each pro...
What are the differences between Apache Kafka and IBM MQ?
Apache Kafka is open source and can be used for free. It has very good log management and has a way to store the data used for analytics. Apache Kafka is very good if you have a high number of user...
How does IBM MQ compare with VMware RabbitMQ?
IBM MQ has a great reputation behind it, and this solution is very robust with great stability. It is easy to use, simple to configure and integrates well with our enterprise ecosystem and protocol...
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Also Known As

WebSphere MQ
Enterprise Message Service
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Deutsche Bahn, Bon-Ton, WestJet, ARBURG, Northern Territory Government, Tata Steel Europe, Sharp Corporation
BNL, SunGard, TUI Group, UTi Worldwide, Yellow Pages Group
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM MQ vs. TIBCO Enterprise Message Service and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.